From Ethnography to Mesography

Abstract

The prevailing geopolitical relations between parts of the world have always provided the enabling matrix of anthropological practice. Given the emerging global power alternation and its reconfiguration of the political and epistemic relations between regions of the world, which I call a postexotic historical conjuncture, anthropology must recalibrate its practices. This article suggests 5 domains of disciplinary adjustment: First, the reconceptualization of our metageographic imagination from one that assumes hierarchical relations to one of horizontal or radial relations between the world’s regions. Second, the abandonment of an egocentric intellectual sensibility in favor of a sociocentric one, as orientation to fieldwork. Third, the disassociation of fieldwork as a distinctive research practice from ethnography. Fourth, the substitution of mesography for ethnography as an alternative approach to inquiry for a postexotic anthropology. And fifth, the adoption of an ethic of reciprocity as a remedy to the chronic unequal exchange between anthropologists and communities.